Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius - Nitro Rad

[Music] i grew up watching a lot of late 90s and early 2000s nickelodeon shows you know being a kid growing up in the early 2000s and all but if there was one of these shows that really stuck out to me in that vast sea of sponges reptars godparents and teenage robots and was a super powered mind and a mechanical canine dude i freaking love jimmy neutron it is literally my favorite thing nickelodeon has ever put out i like spongebob and i did also really love rugrats but i think jimmy neutron clicked with my sense of humor a little bit more than anything else they put out and the premise behind it had so much potential i really like this idea of a naive kid whose own genius landed him in all sorts of ridiculous scenarios his unmatched intellect would let him create tons of amazing inventions like jet packs hovercraft spaceship shrink race hoverboats anything you can think of but his unchecked ego would also get the best of him often wanting to prove others wrong over the most pointless things she wants proof i'll give her proof no jimmy that's an awful idea or sometimes taking every single chance he can to come off as the smart guy something that would piss off his peers to no end come on sheen it's not rocket science you just have to actually i guess it is rocket science oh well actually it is rocket science shut up jimmy i'm telling you that you can't see the equator one time you can bring cindy all the way to the freaking equator just to prove to her that you can't actually see it like you can on a map like jimmy who cares why did you go through all this effort just to prove a meaningless point i mean it is kind of amazing that you actually do have the means to prove that point nobody else does but look what happened dude you got shipwrecked because of it good going brain blast like you'd last a day here without my science skills oh oh you mean the ones that got us into this mess and that is what made jimmy such a good character he was wicked smart but his personality was very flawed his experiments were often short-sighted creating solutions to things that aren't really problems or trying to wiggle around his laziness or cheat his way to victory by creating an unfair advantage or simply letting his curiosity get him into danger i guess conceptually the show was pretty similar to failured parents you know like a little kid has access to something most kids don't and that allows him to create basically anything he wants but unlike fairly oddparents jimmy was based in science and i always thought science was way cooler i knew i'd never be able to make wishes like timmy could but as a kid i was able to feel that maybe someday i could also be smart enough to make something really cool too even if jimmy's inventions were always based in science fiction but the characters are easily what made the show so freaking great jimmy's friends and parents having a deal with all of his obnoxious experiments it let the comedy bounce between them hugh is easily my favorite character like this painfully optimistic moronic father that is so convinced that all this nothing he says is like the greatest advice in the world what if i tell the hardin hadn't picked up his pants but i luke skywalker you're here i'll tell you the force was with that guy's pants i'm glad i've cleared that up for you son bye-bye the absolute confidence this man has is something to be admired he's also just like generally the weirdest character which makes them super memeable these days carl was also a really good character a voice by the legendary rob paulson everybody carl is just full of bangers dude and most of my favorite lines they usually come from him i see london i see france you got really good eyes then i've watched a lot of the show recently and i still think it holds up pretty good a lot of jokes are just as relevant as ever but mom it's the new science fiction kung fu action buddy comedy sequel to last summer's box office smash based on an old tv show we've never heard of i have to see it i still find myself laughing at the show a lot way more than when i revisit other nickelodeon shows i know some people aren't really all that into the roughly hcg but i do still like the show's unique 3d look even if some of the character designs can be a little bit unappealing to some people by today's standards the movie holds up pretty good too i'd say it was a movie before a show after all and while i didn't get to see it in theaters my first experience with jimmy neutron was the original movie i remember watching it on vhs at a friend's house as a kid and i very much remember everybody in the room absolutely loving it it's just one of those ideas that's simple but effective you know the genius kid tries to make contact with aliens that ends up being a really bad idea that they come and abduct everyone's parents and then jimmy ass around of all the kids at retrofit to go on an intergalactic rescue mission i'd say i probably like the show a lot more than the movie but i still think it's a fantastic introduction to like who this character is establishing the premise with a fun lighthearted adventure but uh oh it's the early 2000s which means every kid's movie needs a ps2 game i don't got to tell you guys the movie tie-ins were always rushed out the door and were rarely any good i just slapped together a product while the film is still relevant just to make some extra cash but hey who knows i did grow up playing some jimmy neutron games there aren't a good chunk of them actually and i do remember really liking attack of the twonkeys and you know sometimes movie tie-ins have been surprisingly solid so who's to say the jimmy neutron movie game has to be bad maybe i'm being a little bit too optimistic i don't actually expect this thing to be any good at all but hey i'm a long time fan of the jimmy neutron series so i thought it'd be really fun to review through all the gb neutron games and yeah i guess we got to start somewhere this is the only one i have zero confidence in being any good whatsoever but uh hey let's give it a shot why not there's three versions of this game there's the console version available on ps2 and gamecube the pc version which is totally different for the console version and then finally the game boy advanced version which i'll talk more about in another video covering all of the neutron gba games today we're going to be looking at the ps2 and pc versions of the game let's start with ps2 because i don't know big sky interactive made this thing apparently uh what the hell do they make the only thing i can find is spongebob revenge the flying dutchman apparently this and that is all they did they were not around very long oh weird this game's intro uses clips from the pilot you know the one where it kind of hits the story beats from the movies intro but jimmy's wearing like a different shirt and everybody looks like slightly off model it's so weird you think being a movie tie-in they would use footage from you know the actual movie oh they did they use both weird okay oh man that's a lazy title screen just the logo that's it really like you couldn't even have animated it or anything oh it's like slightly offsetter too and the music like is that even the jimmy neutron theme like i guess it is but it's like a weak ass version of it hey come on man jenny's got like the sickest bass riff ever the second you hear that thing it's like dude it's jimmy freaking neutron you know that riff alone is mad iconic i don't know how the hell they're gonna take that and turn it into this nothing sounding elevator music like come on oh that's jarring no opening cutscene no menu you just land right in jimmy's lab oh i guess jimmy's lab is the menu well sort of you got your load and save over at the right in here we've got options over there there's bonuses and in here is the level select hub so yeah sure let's do the first level what wait retro lands the first level well no that can't be or the movie starts with jimmy making contact with aliens with a space probe what about that and what about the scene where jimmy uses the shrink ray to sneak out that would have been a really cool level the whole house being gigantic trying to platform over the big furniture that would have been cool or hell even before that oh why not have a level where we get to explore retroville on jimmy's way to school using his inventions to get around or what about a level trying to collect everything jimmy needs to make those pearls and diamonds to butter up his mom no for some reason the game skips all of that and cuts right to retro land which mind you is 29 minutes into the film's run time yeah i checked that's 35 percent of the movie the game immediately skips right out of the gate it doesn't even try to summarize it or condense it with cutscenes or anything no it just opens right here in retro land standing in front of nick having this conversation that is how the game opens up no context whatsoever if you weren't already familiar with the plot of the movie you'd be totally lost here oh my god these models are hideous the faces don't even animate like yeah at all the mouths don't move they don't even blink maybe that's how neutron got his genius by staring unending into a void of madness polluting one's mind with forbidden knowledge that would be passed unlearned there's something truly terrifying about seeing the brain blast kids staring at you with this wide gaping unblinking eyes god maybe ignorance is bliss so nick decides out of nowhere that jimmy has to collect six prizes for no reason and that's what we spend the level doing in the movie retro land is just a scene of the mall having fun so i guess having jimmy wander around the park playing games and stuff is the way to go about it but there's one thing that's just really not accurate to the movie i'm not having fun you just aimlessly walk around the park looking for prizes i found this rocket ship to let you play a shoot em up game i assumed you had to beat it to get one of the prizes but no it didn't give me anything other than a good job okay this mini-game appears multiple times throughout the game if you ever see jimmy's rocket in a stage you can jump inside to go to the next shoot em up level each one getting harder and harder i don't think you get anything from it though so i didn't bother doing them all they get way too hard way too fast well what else do we got here there's a fortune telling machine and yeah yeah it just tells jokes um there's a couple of things you can interact with here but the only thing that gets you a prize is this batting carnival game you don't even have to do anything you literally just grab the bat and hit the ball in any direction and the game does all the work for you once you get that thing it's just a matter of completing these various platforming sections each one i guess being a ride in retro land i guess it's more like a level themed after the theme of the ride but like why would any of this be the theme park it's all pretty boring this one's just jumping across magic carpets that's the whole thing you just land on it you wait for it to go all the way over you jump you land and you wait for like that's the whole thing the lava level's got a little bit more going on but it's still just incredibly basic platforming on incredibly basic platforms i mean they only gave jimmy two moves jump and kick that's it there's barely anything here for movement options just basic mindless jumping with absolutely no challenge at all this part here doesn't even have any platforming you just walk straight through this maze it's hardly amazed though you're not going to get lost in this thing it sure as hell may be sick to my stomach though like what am i looking at you go in a clown's mouth and it's just this endless stretch of clown flesh and clown teeth oh my god why would any kid ever want to come in here it's a damn nightmare oh yeah and those rotating obstacles there yeah that's right they don't do anything they don't hurt you at all i don't i don't even know why they're there oh my god carl what do they do to you i could have changed my mind why didn't you go without me wait that's not what carl sounds like that is not carl's voice actor that's not his voice even weirder the manual still credits rob paulsen for voicing carl even though in game they credit wally wingberg i almost wish the manual credited who made the manual just so i could see who it was to mess that up well i guess to be fair it is a pretty nice looking manual though you can tell that they kind of just use sheen's t-pose or this picture right here like like listen guys i know i can't see the body but you're not fooling me i know a t-pose and i see one a king goobot down there too well i guess at least it's not as bad as ko the kangaroos manual they didn't even try to cover it up there anyway once you get all the prizes you get a cut scene where everyone shares their findings before jimmy just brags that he was the only one who found some cool stuff oh my god sheen what did jimmy do to you god the animation never stops getting worse huh this next level you can beat in literally five minutes i'm not even joking it is so small he got a tiny portion of jimmy's lab his backyard and his house that's it i guess it's kind of cool exploring the environment you see in the movie and the show but i don't know there's just not much detail here at all it feels so slapped together that it does not give you that feeling whatsoever especially with how restrictive it is about where you can go it would have been so cool to be able to explore retroville especially considering that unlike every other nickelodeon show at the time jimmy neutron was a 3d show it had a 3d environment that would have made so much sense for a game but don't expect anything like that here why would you want that from a jimmy neutron game silly it's not like that's the only thing you could want from a jimmy neutron game they don't even bother to get many of the details right either like this scene right here any jimmy neutron fan will tell you exactly what's wrong with this i really hate how awkwardly they fumble from scene to scene it's always just like a cut scene of them saying what they're gonna do and then we cut to them when they've already done it like we don't see them leave we don't see them land here no we just go from here to here with nothing but the level select screen to bridge the gap the rest of the levels take you from the asteroid to the ocean empire these are definitely closer to playing an actual video game in the first two levels but they're still painfully dull you'll start bumping into enemies more often but none of them really pose a threat because you can just get them in a stun lock if you match the attack button so you're never gonna lose there's a couple of different weapons you can pick up to help deal with enemies there's the shrink ray yeah you gotta have the shrink ray uh there's the inflate array that makes enemies explode and the baseball bat that pretty much kills everybody in one hit but again the combat is so easy already that getting one of these weapons doesn't really change much other than i guess viewing a different attacking animation i guess the bat's kinda helpful sometimes cause it does kill things in one hit but man what a waste oh guys we gotta rescue cindy from the space urchins don't worry cindy we'll take em on remember the part of the movie where jimmy just kills a bunch of freaking aliens with his bare ass hands then he throws their corpses at a giant space form that looks like it's from taco bell and it blows up into a million pieces i'm really glad they put that part in i don't know what the game would have been without it sometimes jimmy can pick up and throw stuff like these alien things for some reason uh these power crystals they're really hard to get out for some reason can i jimmy can i can i juice can i oh these little bombs too which i was so convinced i had to do something with like a puzzle or something i kept trying to throw them at this green pipe here but nothing would happen it turns out they just respawn infinitely in place just in case you want to throw one at a regular enemy and take them out that way but again the combat is so easy there's never any reason to actually do that those energy crystals you got to pick them up and throw them in this big reactor to get cindy out of a cell at the end of this level but like that's not even what happens in the movie everybody's in this cell and they all break out together but i guess here they figured it'd be easier to just make one person in the cell and then put that at the end of a generic stage instead but man what a wasted opportunity like even if it didn't follow the movie exactly breaking out of prison would have been so cool it's a well-known fact that boston out of jail is like one of the most fun things you can do in a video game so what if we collected something that made an invention to get us all out that would have been sick god the fixed camera makes this part of the game so annoying you can't control the camera the whole game which isn't usually a problem since you just go straight most of time but here you gotta go down this way i had no way of knowing there was a path here i just assumed it went off the cliff like the rest of the area does i was walking around in circles here for like 15 minutes i was chucking around these guys thinking i had to do something with them but no they just use these enemies here for like no reason this time while before they were there to be thrown at this guy so naturally i thought i had to throw them at something here too it didn't seem like there was anything else to do there's also a bunch of collectibles to get these uh atoms here or no no no a neutron particles according to the game no dude i'm pretty sure those are atoms there's neutrons in atoms why are we calling it after like one part of it calling this a neutron particle would be like calling this burger a slice of cheese that doesn't make any sense yeah i know they called it neutron because it's jimmy neutron i'm putting too much thought into it but like seriously that's not it's not a neutron oh and yeah they don't serve any purpose at all like there's actually no point in collecting these they unlock nothing they just treat it like a high score what's the point of that in a game like this wait so you're telling me i was going around busting the [ __ ] out of every trash can in retro land for no reason dude i was going on a total rampage absolutely decimating every single one of the whole park and now some poor janitor's got to come clean it all up just because jimmy needed his neutron particles that don't even do anything you can also find goddard lying around in some areas and if you interact with him he turns into one of two vehicles you only really need the pogo stick like twice in the whole game and other than that goddard doesn't really serve any purpose at all but like why do i need the pogo stick here there's no platforming here i mean i guess you can use it to grab more neutron particles but there's no point in getting those so why would i i guess the scooter is good for getting around faster and it can also damage enemies if you run into them with it but in most cases it's just a good way to send jimmy flying into something that'll kill him goddard also shows up for these slide levels where he turns into a board and you ride him down a slope they're not very difficult but they sure do control like trash and the weight feels way too heavy and the steering is really sluggish sometimes i'd spam jump just to try and make it slightly easier to steer the final level has the most thoughtless design you can tell that like instead of creating new obstacles that naturally blend into a challenging level no they just spam the existing obstacles a bunch of times yeah like just chucking a bunch of yoki and just throwing a bunch of lasers just yeah just put a bunch of you can just walk right around all of it this is not how you make a challenging level the final two and only two bosses are of course with uh poultry and king goobot poltra is painfully easy you just get her to peck at each of these turret things and the fight's pretty much over beating her is so underwhelming too the animation has zero oomph to it freaking pikmin did this better check this out yeah like now there's an animation for beating a big bird beating a big bird that sounded way better when i was writing this king gooban's a weird fight you got to throw these eggs these turrets and well once i got those taken out i just kept throwing eggs at him and it wouldn't do anything no yeah you're like you're literally supposed to just go up to him and uh [Music] after you beat his ass to a green pulp we uh get this abridged version of the final scene but they cut it down to just jimmy's conversation with his parents oh my lord this game's so unpolished what's with the weak sound effect the weak visual why is jimmy still in the level dancing right after he walked away did he did he warp himself back to the level just to dance i don't know and i don't really care either all i do know is this game is a steaming pile of garbage it feels like barely any effort went into it at all probably nothing more than just a paycheck for a small team of developers the models look like crusty potatoes the animations are stiff and laughable the level design is practically non-existent every obstacle is painfully rudimentary they do a piss-poor job of recreating the movie's environments and the game lacks any sense of challenge whatsoever they barely even cover the movie at all like they kind of hit three of the plot points but the rest is total filler well i guess all that's left to show is the secret room it's just got a model viewer and some bonus clips you can watch like trailers for other nickelodeon games and clips from the movie there's one of nick cannon showing us the behind the scenes here's a tip when you're playing make sure you talk to all of jimmy's friends they're going to show you how to bust up more kids wow nick you make this game look way better than it is thanks for lying to children i don't know why anybody would ever want to use the model viewer though i think the less people look at these hideous things the better well that was a big pile of poop hopefully the pc version will be a little bit better and nickelodeon used to make a lot of pc versions of their games but weirdly enough they would be like different games by totally different people too a battle for bikini bottom for example you know the platformer everyone knows this one but no on pc it's not a platformer it's like a weird mini-game collection the same title same box art and everything but completely different game kinda misleading don't you think well let's get this guy installed i guess i wonder how different this one's gonna be oh this one actually starts with the cut scene uh the yokians are looking for jimmy neutron but not because they want to abduct everyone's parents but because they think he's the source of a rebel signal have you located the rebel base yet we believe we heard some noises we think are coming from the human boy named jimmy neutron that must be the area wait what i don't know it feels like a really clunky reason almost like the developers don't even know why the aliens want to get jimmy they just say some nonsense and do this time the plot actually doesn't really follow the movie but there are a lot of common elements between the two it almost feels like they watched the pilot and then made a game surrounding the general concept which honestly i think i do prefer over the game trying to follow the movie and doing a terrible job wait she ran away that fast well anyway we then cut to jimmy's lab where he's testing out a new teleportation booth our first goal is to find some new parts for it oh well the uh the the models certainly look uh better obviously still not great they still kind of look like they're out of an onion's butt but uh hey at least the animation's better they actually blink and move their mouse now it doesn't have the uncanniness the ps2 models did at least i really like this little cat guy this model is just so dumb wait oh no at least the ps2 version didn't have tank controls oh god you can't use a gamepad either it's keyboard only you'll have to use the arrow keys to steer jimmy around like a car now unlike the ps2 version which was a linear platformer this one's more like an open world collect-a-thon you'll explore retroville as freely as you want looking around for items talking npcs meeting simple objectives and unlocking new inventions that'll let jimmy progress further into the game yo you actually have the shrink ray this time and it's not a temporary power up either no it's like jimmy's weapon of choice the way it should be man yeah like any enemies come at you you shrink them down and they're not gonna hurt you no more yeah buddy it ain't jimmy neutron unless i got that shrink ray the gadget you'll use the most though is definitely the jet pack a jimmy can use this thing to temporarily take flight and get up to rooftops and higher areas and stuff there is some like weird physics to it though you kind of got to let it boost you upward and then carry that momentum forward it is kind of clunky being an old computer game and everything but thankfully it's not too difficult to get the hang of it the jumping is so weird jimmy like leans into it when you press left and right i know it's because of the way the jetpack is programmed but it's really weird that he still does that when you're not using it it does look pretty funny though they get way better use out of goddard here and now you can morph them into a scooter whenever you want which you'll use to simply get around faster but the thing is that actually makes sense this time it's an open world game before you would just ride them around a small portion of a linear stage it was pointless but now i find myself using goddard all the time he's so useful for just getting around town a lot of the inventions are pretty good with that actually instead of being meaningless power-ups they now usually affect your character's movement like the bubble they got the bubble in here remember that pov shot from the movie where jimmy's zipping through the neighborhood well it is really clunky to control but for the time this actually does a pretty solid job of recreating that feeling flying up to the rooftops just to get a look around is also a really fun time but like dude i'm not gonna lie i'm kind of geeking out here yeah it's got butt graphics and clunky tank controls doesn't control well it doesn't really look that good but i'm actually exploring retroville so who cares i can go downtown to the school in jimmy's lab even jimmy's house i don't know why aliens are invading its tv that's kind of creepy you can even go to area 51 you know like from the opening of the movie i love having this big desert area to explore it's a really good fit for flying around in the rocket yo buddy let's go to retro land oh you can ride the rides and everything by collecting tickets and stuff it doesn't really serve any purpose at all but that's still a wicked cool detail you can even play these carnival games to get more tickets they're all kind of super duper broken but i feel like that's what adds to the charm oh my god that is a lot of collectibles most of these you find simply scattered around town at random locations and you'll get points for returning them to their respective locations for example bringing flowers home to your mom's flower pods putting candy in candy jars and giving food to goddard to shrinking down these mutant fish and putting them back in their bowls the list goes on mmm candy bar no jimmy not candy bar it's candy in the jar none of these items serve any purpose at all outside of getting a high score i mean but again i think that's pretty pointless in a game like this but i do at least think it is kind of interesting having that score at the end be reflective of how much time you've spent exploring retroville okay well sorta it really just boils down to how many red neutrons you collected okay i'm really starting to wish i didn't get so many well at least collecting neutrons isn't totally pointless this time and now they refuel your health and your gadgets if you run out of energy you'll have to grab some more that's so much better now i actually have incentive to get these things some of these inventions are so jank though the invisibility cloak for example it's a total joke some areas have you sneaking past the oceans but when you get caught they just slowly float towards you and barely do any damage but if you equip the cloak they just instantly forget you even existed and go back to their patrol paths it's kind of hilarious you also get to do all this in the game's final mission but i have a feeling this will be the toughest area yet this is the easiest area yet it's really just a matter of turning on whether or not they know you're there it's programmed so painfully basic but even that aside it's so easy just to walk right past everybody they go so slow and they hardly give chase at all but the best jank invention is the grappling hook i could barely get this thing to work as intended i would just whip all over the place and get stuck in a wall half the time the handful of times you have to use this thing it's not too hard to get working thankfully so it never becomes a problem no it's just something stupid that's fun to play with screwing around with this thing was a ton of fun this game is adorably broken dude like one time i got pushed upward just because an npc like kinda walked in my direction and i got stuck floating above the door i can't wait i can't move i'm stuck i eventually got loose after like two solid minutes of struggling but man i was so worried i just softlocked the game i swear every video game falling animation back then what is up with the game's ending i mean they literally do the congratulations thing from evangelion all right jimmy way to go jimmy good job jimmy boy good job jimmy boy oh my god they use both takes for you you're supposed to pick one like the ps2 version this game is painfully easy the enemy ai is horrible and the objectives are all really easy to meet but man i'd be lying if i said i didn't have a great time exploring retroville even if it was pretty broken this is exactly what i'd want from a jimmy neutron game after all and seeing them take the time to fill it up with references to the world in the movie gave me a lot to get excited about let me put it this way if the ps2 version is this unfinished boring platformer that was slapped together and is not worth playing at all then the pc version is this charming broken sandbox of jankiness it is that world you know and love from the movie except it's flimsily held together with scotch tape and there's something about it that is just so hard not to love there'd be many neutron games to come but when the series was hot and new this is all people really had i pity the people i grew up with this version but hey i'm willing to bet a lot of people do have fond memories of this pc version it's not well made at all in fact it's completely broken but i had such a wonderful time laughing at all this game's stupid quirks and enjoying all the references to the film let me take that one and throw it right in the garbage but if you're a big fan of jimmy neutron and you sometimes like playing older janky or stuff no i would totally recommend the pc version it's really fun and it's charming as hell it's a cute little piece of history for sure but the series goes on they would make three more jimmy neutron games the next of which wasn't even like based on the movie or show or anything no it was like this weird original thing jimmy neutron versus jimmy negatron pc only no console version this time but uh yeah i'm very much looking forward to seeing what the hell this thing's all about and i guess we'll do that next time i'll see you guys then with more jimmy neutron what's up welcome to the end of the video uh thanks for watching this one this was actually a lot of fun making this one because i don't know i feel like for the first time in like forever i'm actually talking about something i grew up with and therefore know a lot about so uh getting all the neutron out of me has been a very satisfying experience but yeah if you want to support the channel i have a one dollar podcast up on patreon.com brain blast

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 355,499

Keywords: nitro rad, review, jimmy neutron, nickelodeon, boy genius, platformer, pc, ps2, gamecube, movie tie-in, move game, movie games, carl wheezer, sheen, cindy, hue neutron, jimmy neutron pc game, jimmy neutron game, tank controls, retroville, retroland, brainblast, timmy turner, fairly odd parents, tv, adaptation, neutron, science, idk dude, why are you looking here you creep

Id: pg8-96m4xU0

Length: 28min 4sec (1684 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/InsomniacAndroid]

Disclaimer before the mods remove it after watching 2 minutes: The first few minutes give an overview/mini review of the original movie and series, but the next 25 minutes are reviewing/retrospectives of the movie tie in games for the PS2 and PC.

[u/1kingdomheart]

I always like the Twonkie game the most. I never beat it though. Honestly, that would make for another great remake, though I doubt they'll ever do it. Jimmy Neutron isn't as eternally relevant like Spongebob.